In City of New York v. Blue Rage Inc, a mom-and-pop clothing store was sued for trademark violations by the City of New York. The Cop Shop, located in Massapequa, Long Island, is the culmination of former transit policeman Salvatore Piccolo’s dream to serve the law enforcement community even in retirement. In addition to providing regulation…
At the end of January, the Northern District of California waded into the dangerous and complicated waters of software copyright infringement in Oracle v. Hewlett Packard. The case concerned software patches, or updates, licensed by Oracle and installed by Hewlett Packard, sometimes through a support services company called Terix. Before this suit, Oracle and Terix knew…
In McDermott v. Monday Monday, the Southern District of New York reiterated what it means to be a copyright troll — and the trouble inherent in essentially seeking to “clear one’s name”, whether by bringing a defamation claim or asking a judge to re-phrase something they’ve written. The plaintiff in this case was represented by attorney…
Cervejaria Petropolis SA v. Ambev S.A. comes our way from the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in D.C., via the TTAB. In this case, Ambev had applied to the USPTO for registration of the mark FUSION, but was barred by the registration of the appellant, Cervejaria Petropolis (CP) for the same mark. CP had inherited the FUSION…
A recent, precedential decision from the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) examined the difference between a source identifier, and informational text that just happens to appear close to a logo. In Re TracFone, Inc. concerned cellular provider TracFone’s failed application for the mark UNLIMITED CARRYOVER as a trademark on the Principal Register. The question before the…
I don’t usually take requests, but sometimes the popular demand is too much to ignore. I’ve been asked twice in one week about any advantages to registering on the Supplemental Register of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Often when one applies to the Principal Register of the USPTO, the examining attorney will say, in his or…
In a previous blog, I wrote about the case of DuBay v. King, in which the alleged heir of the rights to the comic book The Rook sued author Stephen King — and anyone who had ever been in the same room with him — for infringement. The case was dismissed on summary judgment after an analysis proved there…
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, or TTAB, issued an interesting ruling at the end of 2018. The TTAB is in effect the forum providing review of decisions rendered by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) trademark examining attorneys. The case in question is Rebecca Curtin v. United Trademark Holding Inc (“UTH”). UTH filed a trademark…
I was a big Batman fan when I was a kid. That’s one of the reasons Kaufman v. Warner Brothers caught my attention (the other sharing the correct spelling of the plaintiff’s surname — no relation!). This was a case that did not go well for the plaintiff — and frankly was a bit of a stretch…
Bright Ideas, the New York Bar Association’s I.P. Journal, published an article that Mark Kaufman wrote. It provides a detailed discussion of one of our previous blog articles, Metadata? The Devil (and the Credit) Is in the Details. Be warned, this version for the Bar Association is a bit more lawyerly, so it might be exuberantly…
- 1(current)
- 2